Monday, March 9, 2009

Some set work

Well, the chores were easily divided when we started on this project. I would do the robobt (who would only show up from about halfway into the film), René would be making the girl, Tom the father, and Job would be doing all matte paintings. Which is all very great, until someone had to stand up and make the damned set; a steampunk-esque street. Hmm. Since the robot didn't have top-priority, I rose to the challenge! I figured there wouldn't be time to build alot of unique houses, but that was alright, we wanted the set to be impersonal anyway. So I figured like this; I would take a cube, 10 by 10 by 10, use stanard UVs, make a dozen different textures that tile on all sides, and voilà, we have building blocks to build a street with!The interesting part to note here was the fact that it was figuring out HOW to do this, took more time than actually doing it. Which has never happened before with us. But hey, you gotta learn, right?

Once I had made some textures, I made a few stepped gables (yes, we're very Dutch) that would fit onto them, UVed in a way so they could use the same textures and still fit. This would allow me to duplicate some blocks, put one of the gables on it, scale and move it around, and be done with it! INSTA HOMES. I made the entire street like this, meanwhile Tom had made some cool windows, doors and sidewalk-thingies, and I put them all over the place quickly filling the street.

render by Tom

Tom took over from here, working out the lighting and further placement of the props modeled by Job. Tom was by far the guy for this as his understanding of shading, rendering and compositing greatly exceeds ours. Keep an eye out on his future posts to see what he made of the final set :)